When NASA released a remarkable series of photographs from the Artemis II mission, I found myself staring at them much longer than I expected. One image, in particular, stopped me in my tracks. The Moon appears to eclipse the Sun, leaving only a brilliant halo of light surrounding its dark silhouette. It feels almost surreal.

Yet nothing extraordinary actually happened.

The Moon didn’t suddenly become larger. The Sun didn’t change. The universe carried on exactly as it had moments before. The image exists because the spacecraft happened to occupy one very specific place at one very specific moment.

Change the observer’s position, and the view changes completely.

Perhaps that’s why these photographs captured my attention. I still remember standing in front of our family’s console television with my dad in July of 1969, watching Apollo 11 land on the Moon. He was so captivated that he pulled out his Super 8 movie camera and filmed what we were watching on the television. Space has always represented humanity’s final frontier, and decades later it still has the ability to make me stop and look a little longer.

Business—and life—have a way of working like that.

Changing Your Vantage Point

Sometimes we become so accustomed to viewing our businesses from one familiar vantage point that we forget there are countless others. We look at the same customers, the same competition, the same products and services, and the same challenges until they begin to feel permanent—as though there couldn’t possibly be another way to approach them.

Often there is.

Changing your perspective doesn’t necessarily change the facts.

It changes what the facts allow you to see.

We often think breakthroughs arrive because someone discovers a better answer. More often, they begin because someone asks a better question.

A Different Question

One of my favorite stories this year had nothing to do with business. It followed a team of physicians and researchers faced with what had long been considered an almost impossible challenge: a baby born with an extraordinarily rare genetic disease. For decades, medicine approached these disorders in familiar ways—treat the symptoms, manage the progression, or, in the most severe cases, replace the failing organ.

Then someone asked a different question.

Rather than asking how to replace what was broken, the researchers asked whether they could simply correct the tiny error in the patient’s DNA that caused the disease in the first place [NYTimes, paywall].

The technology certainly mattered. But technology alone didn’t produce the breakthrough. It expanded what the scientists could imagine doing.

I suspect most breakthroughs don’t arrive with trumpets blaring. They probably begin as quiet conversations between curious people who simply refuse to accept that “this is how it’s always been done.”

That story has stayed with me because it illustrates something much larger than advances in medicine.

Most breakthroughs don’t begin with a new answer. They begin with a new question.

It made me wonder how many business problems become so familiar that we stop questioning the assumptions behind them. We become so busy refining yesterday’s answers that we fail to notice someone else has changed the question.

Looking at Your Business Differently

We are especially vulnerable to this trap.

We spend years building systems, refining processes, and developing expertise. Eventually, those very strengths can become blinders. What once served us well gradually becomes “the way we’ve always done it.”

Customers, however, don’t see our businesses from the inside. They don’t know why a process takes six steps instead of three. They don’t care that a policy made perfect sense when you wrote it ten years ago. They simply experience your business as it exists today.

Perspective has a way of revealing assumptions we no longer realize we’re making.

The challenge isn’t to look harder. It’s to look from a different vantage point.

Take a few moments this week to look at your own business from somewhere else.

Not physically.

Mentally.

Ask yourself:

• If you were starting your business today, would you build it the same way?
• Which “rule” in your industry have you never questioned?
• Where have your customers adapted to your process instead of you adapting to theirs?
• Are you selling a product or service…or creating an outcome?
• If someone from a completely different industry examined your business, what would they ask that you’ve stopped asking?

None of these questions has a single correct answer. Their value lies in encouraging you to step outside your familiar viewpoint, if only for a few moments. Sometimes that’s all it takes to uncover an opportunity that has been quietly waiting for you to notice it.

What Perspective Makes Possible

As I continued looking through NASA’s Artemis photographs, another image caught my attention. This time, the Earth was peeking over the Moon’s barren horizon—a familiar home seen from an unfamiliar place. Once again, nothing about the Earth had changed.

Only the observer had.

I’ve come to believe that’s true in business as well.

Perhaps the next opportunity in your business isn’t waiting for you to work harder. Perhaps it’s waiting for you to stand somewhere you’ve never stood before…or, with a small wink to Star Trek, someplace you’ve never gone before.

The Moon didn’t move.

The Earth didn’t move.

The Sun didn’t move.

Only the observer did.

Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Perspective doesn’t change reality.

It changes what reality makes possible.

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More Elements of Business:

• Repetition – Marketing’s Secret Weapon
• Speed – Adapt Fast, Thrive Long
• Intentional Quality
• Business Style
• Competition

Elements of Business focuses on one word or short phrase about business. Given the demands upon our daily attention, it’s often daunting to consider the recommendations in an article. (It’s estimated the average American consumes about 100,000 words heard or read every day.) But a simple word or phrase may be enough to stir your grey cells on the task at hand.